


Face Painting and Evan-tual Dating

by orphan_account



Series: City Employees [1]
Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: Alana is sassy and can see right through Jared's bluff, Evan is just anxious, Flirting, Fluff, Jared is a big flirt who works for the city, M/M, THE TEENS AND LIKE ACTUAL TODDLERS, adorable children, its sweet and Soft, they're face painting at a family festival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-09
Updated: 2017-04-09
Packaged: 2018-10-16 15:11:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10573878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Jared Kleinman - City Intern. The title sounded cool, but working at events sometimes wasn't. The only redeeming quality of painting children's faces for three hours is flirting with their older siblings.





	

It was days like these that Jared regretted his mother's working for the city's parks and recreation department. It had its perks, but they were immediately out-washed by the amount of events he had to attend and work at.

Yeah, sure, children probably felt more comfortable having a seventeen year old giving them balloons or painting their faces as opposed to a fifty year old, but why did he have to be that seventeen year old? It was especially bad when he saw people from school. They smiled at him and let him continue to put cold cheap paste on five year olds who won't stop _moving their fucking faces_ and then sat with their friends and probably videoed him for Snapchat without his consent- a real dick move, if you asked him.

One time he'd been working an event and had the pleasure of the Murphy siblings being in attendance. Connor, who he was sure would murder someone one day, and Zoe, who was like this mystical fairy compared to her mentally disturbed brother and parents, had come up to the table because of something about a bet and Connor ended up with a butterfly on his forehead. Jared tried to keep his head down but Zoe recognized him and insisted he paint a robot on her hand- it was a shitty robot, but she appreciated the effort. When they walked away, Jared called Connor "Edward Cullen" and almost got punched- Zoe also looked super disappointed. Not one of his highest moments.

This time around, Jared sunk into his sweater as his mom pulled into the parking lot of the city park- filled with vendors and soda trucks and tents and people wearing tacky t-shirts from whatever company they were from.

Lucky for Jared, all the city employees had to wear was something green along with a stick-on name-tag. He himself had worked these things so many times that he had his own laminated name-tag with "Jared Kleinman - City Intern" written in snazzy letters- it wasn't really an internship, per say, because he wasn't getting school credit or furthering education in this field (he had zero interest in even entering this field), but his mom was the one of the only ones with a kid who wasn't in college or out of school, so he was called to enough things to _technically_ be an intern.

Name-tag on chest, Jared left behind his mom and stumbled over the uneven grass to the face painting table, where he greeted Alana Beck, the quirky girl who did a lot of these events as well. She didn't have a parent who was a city employee, but there were internship openings last year and she ended up interning for the head of the arts committee, so she did lots of these events as an actual intern. Despite normally being sassy to everyone, Jared tended to be perfectly kind to Alana, and he supposes they might've been friends if she didn't seem to closed off to the idea of having friends at all- but Jared didn't question it.

"Hello, Jared. How are you?" Alana asks, perfectly politely.

"I'm fine. Ready to paint some children." Jared says, rolling his eyes, making Alana stifle a laugh.

"Hey, maybe this time we won't get anymore kids who scream every time the paintbrush touches their face." Alana says.

"Or parents who make their kids get it done regardless of what the kid wants."

"For real. Some people just don't know a thing about free will."

"Jared, Alana, I'm glad you guys are here." the two turn around and are face to face across the table with the white haired man in his sixties who was president of the parks department- in charge of all these events.

"Hello!" Alana said cheerfully. Jared just waved.

"If you guys want to start pulling out water cups and brushes, there are also some reference sheets if a kid doesn't know what they want. People will start showing up around 6:30. Since this is the Christmas Family Festival, I'm not entirely sure how many kids will be here or on vacation." he nods and promptly goes away, leaving the two seventeen year olds with the two full cases of face paint cakes and brushes.

Lots of the cakes are old and gross, but the arts committee won't let them throw anything away because they're all about ~saving~ things and using them until they expire (sometimes they kept using them after they'd expired and just tried not to say anything).

Once most of the basic colors are set up and the water is poured (in plastic Bud Light cups- it seems a little weird to Jared to use beer cups at a family event, but they serve alcohol at the soda trucks regardless, so he tends to disregard it.)

Just around 6:30 PM, just like when they were told, families start showing up and while not all of them immediately jump for the face painting booth, some of them do, and Jared and Alana are in business.

Much to their dismay, they do get faced with screaming children and overbearing parents, but that's all in the experience- it's not really an event if you don't get the good and the screamy. Jared concludes that Alana is much better at this than he is- not the actual face painting, he's surprisingly good at that- but Alana manages to make conversation with the kids, and promote the arts committee, and do a good job on their painting. Jared, on the other hand asks some of the kids their names, and how old they are, but ends up staying silent and concentrated for a lot of it. He also says "Now, you gotta keep your head still for me" more times than he'd like to, and he definitely has to say it more than Alana- because's the world's against him.

At one point, a father of a sweet little girl with bleach blonde hair asks Jared to stop making weird faces while painting his daughter so that he can get some good pictures, and Jared simply continues painting with a smirk.

"I'm sorry. I'm concentrating. I want this to be good, so..."

"I want to get some nice pictures though." he snarks.

"Daddy, don't let him mess up!" The daughter says, and Jared almost stops in his tracks.

"How old did you say you were, sweetie?" Jared asks.

"Seven!"

Jared chuckles and gives the girl a high five, and he can feel Alana glaring daggers into his back because the one thing they're not supposed to do is piss off the parents.

Jared also can't stop smirking and flirting with the older siblings that are sometimes the supervision of the little tykes. Alana scolds him for it, but it's gotten him some dates with some pretty cute guys before, so he doesn't stop. Sometimes, with enough playful prodding, they'll sit down and let Jared paint their faces, and he gets to get super close to them and observe them, all under the facade of concentration.

Even though Jared would never admit it- because he's an asshole- but he also likes painting the siblings faces to get them into the spirit of the event. He can't count on his hands the number of times that a sister has stayed on their phone the entire time their sibling was getting their face painted. He especially engaged in conversation with those families, because if a child wouldn't say something, their sister would chime in with the answer. Getting them chatting made it easier to convince them to get their own face painted, and the Statistics of the Mind of Jared proved that siblings were 100% more likely to go play with their siblings with a dinosaur on their cheek versus without, where they would go right back to their phone.

At one point, when there is a lull in activity because the local dance studio is performing selections from their Nutcracker, and he sees four people coming from the entrance of the park, and he has to look twice to make sure he's seeing correctly. It's a woman and a small child that Jared has never seen before, walking next to Evan Hansen and his mom. He never sees Evan at these types of events- and never would've expected him to. The kid stays in the forest of his backyard 24/7 because it's one of the only places he feels safe (and Jared doesn't blame him).

Jared's trying not to stare, but it's kind of hard. Jared has only seen Evan a couple times at school and talked to him even less than that and he's noticed in the past couple months how soft his eyes are and how both of their little quirks and fidgets seem to die down when they're around each other and he's finally deciphered what's going on- he's kinda (really) in love with Evan.

His mom says something to the other woman and then to Evan, which leads Evan to freeze up a little bit, but then look down at the child, sticking his hands in his hoodie pockets.

With a little more prodding, Evan shrugs and pulls his hands out of his pockets and the women start to giggle as the child pulls Evan toward the park furiously and then Alana taps on his shoulder.

"Kids are about to start getting back so I'm gonna go replace our water. Wanna wash some of these old brushes?" she asks, holding two cloudy Bud Light cups.

"Yeah, sure." Alana runs off toward the bathrooms while Jared picks up the dirty brushes, running them through the brush soap and then into the wash-water, like a routine.

Just as Alana returns with clean water, one of those sweet high-pitched voices rings behind him.

"I want painting!"

Jared turns around and is face to face with the aforementioned child and Evan Hansen himself. "Evan! In the flesh! In public! How did you end up here?"

"Oh- uh- hey, Jared." Evan looks super taken aback to see him here. "I'm here cause uh-"

"I'm Maddie! This is cousin Ebby!" the bright eyed child said enthusiastically.

Evan sighed and nodded. "Yeah, that. Family visiting, f- for Christmas so, uh, we- came here."

Jared somewhat retained that information, but was still internally giggling at "Ebby". He shrugs and pulls out the reference sheet, looking at the little girl.

"Okay, here are some of the ones I can do. I can also do something else, if you have something in mind."

"I want a flower! A yellow one!"

"Okay, just sit in that chair there." Jared grabs a brush and a (non-disgusting) yellow cake, and looks up at Evan while mixing. "I see the love of flora and fauna is a family-wide thing. What's the matter, Evan? Not saying anything." he says quickly, kneeling down to the girl and starts painting.

"I'm- honestly? Shocked at seeing you... not cursing for this long."

"I'm working with children, Evan. I have some respect for my job." Jared clicks his tongue.

Alana waves at Evan meekly, but continues to focus on her own clients- like a good worker. Jared continues to chat up Evan and his tiny relative.

Once the simple flower is almost done, Jared internally clicks his knuckles and looks up at Evan. "So, Evan, is it your turn next?"

"W-what? No, I don't-"

"Aww, come on, are you sure?"

"Yeah, I don't-"

"Ebby's turn! I'm a flower... He can be a tree! I'm little and he's big, it's just like us!" Maddie says, and follows it with a squeal when Jared gives her the mirror.

"That sounds like a great idea. Right, Ebby?" Jared puts his hand under his chin and smirks.

Evan opens his mouth to protest again, but the child is tugging on his hoodie sleeve now, so he buckles down and smiles. "Fine, fine."

Jared stands up, grinning ear to ear and pointing at the chair. "Okay, sit."

Rolling his eyes and swallowing what little pride he had, Evan slinked into the chair and let Jared work his magic.

Jared now realized that he would now be able to look at Evan's perfect brown eyes up close and he hides an excited laugh.

The actual face painting doesn't come with much conversation, mainly because Evan refuses to move while this thick, cold substance is being plastered across his cheek. Maddie is super excited to look at it though, and the eye contact that he and Jared share gets more and more flirty- by Jared's heavy standards, even- and once it's finished he hands the mirror to Evan, who smirks and quickly puts it back down.

"Wait- it's not done." Jared takes a black paint and Evan's hand, scribbling something down as best he could.

"Uh, thanks, Jared." Evan says, with a small, awkward, yet genuine laugh. Jared nods, and is about to say something else, but Maddie has grabbed Evan's hand again and Jared watches them run off toward their mothers again, and she's jumping, pointing at their cheeks.

Evan's mom points out the black on Evan's hand, which he finally looks down at, and looks back to Jared when the words are Jared's own phone number and a heart.

Jared winks and goes back to washing his brushes.

**Author's Note:**

> I am a stressed teenage city employee. I have also been on three dates in the past year from painting children's faces and then convincing their flirty older siblings to get their faces painted too. But only if they were flirting with me first, rest assured. (they never went farther than a couple dates but I am still friends with all of them btw)
> 
> also i hope you like my title pun lol  
> my tumblr is @pigland3 pls join me on there!!


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